


The Tail Of A Ribbon

by chasing_the_sterek



Series: Once Upon A Timeline [2]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Cat Puns, F/M, Fluff, Identity Reveal, Puns & Word Play, Rejoice, Smart Chat Noir, also the title has a pun in it, but i'm tired so fight me, like barely anything happens it's just fluff, the puns will definitely not be the best you've ever seen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-18
Updated: 2016-05-18
Packaged: 2018-06-09 06:51:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6894475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chasing_the_sterek/pseuds/chasing_the_sterek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chat gives an innocent (albeit late) birthday gift. He didn't know it would lead to being hit in the legs with a basketball and flat-out sprinting to Gorilla's limo after fencing class.</p><p> </p><p> <br/><i>One Hundred Ways To Say "I Love You"</i><br/><i><b>2.</b> It reminded me of you.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tail Of A Ribbon

**Author's Note:**

> I tried, okay. Sue me.
> 
>  
> 
> (No, don't. I'm poor.)

"It reminded me of you," Chat says, almost nervously, as he holds out a small, squishy package and avoids her eyes.

Ladybug makes a small, surprised noise and reaches one hand out to take it.

Chat pulls his arm back a little so she can't ge to the gift yet and makes a face. "If you. . . if you don't like it, then. . . uh. . . well, hopefully it won't _present_ a problem, haha -"

Ladybug gives him a (begrudgingly amused) look for the pun and reaches a little farther forward so she can snag it out of his clawed fingers.

"I'm sure it's fine, Chat," she assures, turning it over in her hands a little. It's very small, covered in red wrapping paper with black spots, and she can feel her fingers through it. Whatever's in there is either absolutely tiny, extremely thin, or both. She turns it over again, examining the Chat Noir pawprint label Chat's stuck unceremoniously on one side.  
__  
To my Lady,  
In the hope you can forgive me for **fur** getting your birthday last week.  
Yours,  
Le Chat Noir de Paris  
  
There's a little pawprint doodled underneath the words _Chat Noir._ Ladybug tries not to coo over how perfect it is, neon green outlined in black, so close in likeness to the one on the label it'd be easy to mistake it for being there beforehand. But she's seen these gift tags in shops - she's _bought some_ for Alya before, dammit - and they don't have a pawprint on the inside of the tag, it's blank, so Chat did that himself and it's _not adorable._

"You say that," Chat says, shoulders slumping a bit, "but you never seem to change the ones you have now, so -"

He cuts himself off with a little choked noise, visibly kicking himself mentally.

"The ones I have now, huh?" Ladybug drawls amusedly. "What do I have now?"

"Um," Chat says intelligently, voice strained, and flees across the rooftops.

"Eloquent," Ladybug snorts fondly, and starts to rip the packaging open carefully, eyes on the package. It's pointless trying to even catch a glimpse of Chat if he doesn't want to be seen, so she doesn't try, instead focusing on his gift and reminding herself that if he wants to come back, he will.

After a little while of fiddling with the wrapping paper, trying not to rip it too badly (she wants to keep it for some reason, sue her), before it opens and two sleek ribbons slip out and onto her palm.

They're red, like the ones she's wearing now but a shade or two lighter. There are a couple of tiny black spots on one end, a thick cluster at the very end of the ribbon that thins out as it gets closer to the middle, and two Chat Noir pawprints on the other. It's the same pattern on reverse; green pawprints outlined in black, little black spots, exact shade of red on the fabric.

"They're beautiful," Ladybug murmurs, because they _are,_ and goes to hold them loosely in her mouth while she pulls her current ones out only to freeze when her lips feel what her fingers couldn't through her suit; texture.

She pulls it out of her mouth and examines it again.

The spots are slightly raised, unevenly so but with faint signs of an attempt at fixing the levels. The green bits of one of the pawprints doesn't fully cover it at one point, so there's a miniscule red splodge on the middle of a cat print.

Chat didn't find them and think of her like he'd claimed - he'd _made_ these ribbons for her.

And somehow, the fact that he'd tried to pass it off as something he'd bought rather than something he'd made made it better.

"Dork," Ladybug smiles fondly, putting them in her hair with nimble fingers before swinging home.

(She doesn't see a black cat lurking behind a chimney nearby, watching her every move, analysing how much she liked it, and trying not to blush when she puts them in.)  
**  
**@#£% &**&%£#@  
  
"Hey, Alya!" Marinette greets cheerfully, waving at her friend.

Alya smiles at her, pocketing the phone she'd been tapping away at as she waited, and moves forward to greet her. "Hey, girl! Watcha up yo?"

"Not much," Marinette admits, then lets her lips quirk up inot a little smile. "Looks like you're about to explode from excitement, though. What happened?"

Alya grins sheepishly, but doesn't stop bouncing. "I just posted a blog entry. The ChatBug convention date has finally been announced!"

Marinette's eyes widen. "Seriously!? The _one_ night I don't check!"

Alya laughs, and the two girls fall into step together as they enter the school. "So, anyway, people are super pumped about it."

"Duh," Marinette replies, starting to bounce from both her and Alya's joined excitement. "It's _the Chatbug convention."_

"Where cats and ladybugs rule supreme," Alya agrees, then lights up. She frantically fishes her phone out of her pocket and opens up a new blog entry, tapping out her previous words into the box. "That is so going up."

"Nice one," Marinette whoops, and they high-five each other (Alya managing to do it without looking up from where she's typing one-handed).

"Yo, Alya, Mari!" Nino calls suddenly from behind them. Two sets of footsteps mark two people running up to meet the girls.

"Hey," Adrien smiles widely, readjusting his bag strap from where it was falling off of his shoulder.

"H-Hey," Marinette stutters back. Alya shoots her a piteous, _get it together girl_ look and says a hello of her own.

"Nice new ribbons, Mari," Nino notes excitedly, bouncing on the balls of his feet in an eerily similar way to Alya earlier. "Never seen that design before, though. Did you make them?"

Marinette laughs, fiddling with an end as she remembers she's still wearing Chat's ones and failing to suppress a blush when everyone's attention goes to her. Sure, it's only three people, but one of those three is Adrien, and she doesn't know if it's obvious or not but she has a crush on him the size of the world.

"A friend of mine gave them to me," she corrects softly, smiling as she remembers the encounter. "He made them, but he refused to admit it. Said they were shopbought."

Adrien's eyes have zeroed in on the ribbons like a cat focuses on a mouse in undergrowth. His face is full of unhidden curiosity and shock and surprise and, for some reason, mild fear.

"You have friends other than us?" Alya teases, elbowing her in the side and winking. Her phone's disappeared into a pocket again, obviously a couple of blog updates better off. Nino doesn't seem very alarmed, so Marinette assumes the putting-away happened while she was busy looking at Adrien.

Marinette snorts and tries to ignore both the assessing look Adrien's directing at her face and the weird look Nino's giving the blond in return. "Of course I do. I plan ahead."

Alya's eyes narrow. "For what?"

"Well, when you two get married -"

And she's cut off, laughing and dodging a whack from both Nino and Alya at once, not noticing the way Adrien's brow clears and his shoulders lift into a soft little incredulous laugh of his own.  
**  
**@#£% &**&%£#@  
  
Marinette is Ladybug.

What?

On one level, it makes complete sense. Marinette has moments where she's brave and headstrong and takes the reins in a situation like she's born to do it, and Ladybug has moments where she grows shy and stutters and admits she feels like a burden. The two are startlingly like the other when they cross into the other extreme, but he'd never made the connection before.

On the other hand, it makes absolutely zero sense at all. Marinette cringes a lot and watches whatever she says carefully. She's hesitant and blushes enough for their whole class. Ladybug's confident, secure in her own skin, and while she also watches what she says she doesn't do it to the point Mari does. She almost never blushes, bearing Chat's flirting well - hell, she flirts _back_ without missing a beat sometimes.

How on Earth could they be the same person?

But, somehow, they were, and, somehow, the longer Adrien thinks about it the more sense it makes. The more sense it makes, the surer he gets that he's right and Ladybug hasn't just palmed her ribbons off to the first person to say yes as soon as she got home.

But it's not fair for him to know and Mari (Ladybug?) to not. And so, he resolves to say something.  
**  
**@#£% &**&%£#@  
  
The first attempt gets shut down before he can even start it.

He tries to start up a thread of conversation about Mari's mystery friend (AKA: Chat Noir), but Alya starts to speak at the exact same time and the good manners drilled into him by his father mean that he allows her to continue with her topic before he's caught up with himself and remembered his goal.

He kicks himself mentally, tries not to make a face, and joins in the conversation.  
**  
**@#£% &**&%£#@  
  
The second attempt is a complete flop.

They're in gym, playing dodgeball, and he's trying to talk to Marinette so he can mention how quick her reflexes are and then try to build a plan based on how she replies. It would have worked, too, but he forgets to dodge too and gets it full in the legs by a ball thrown a little too hard by someone on the bench behind him, falls over, and has to go to the nurse to make sure he hasn't hurt himself too badly.

Afterwards, he's told that while his enthusiasm is a nice change of pace from his usual hatred of gym (you can't just _run_ without caring like he can as Chat, and he has to rein the strength, speed, and flexibility in anyway so he doesn't give away his identity) upon no uncertain terms can he play, and so he has to sit out and watch Marinette annihilate the other team now she's not distracted by Adrien's weird flailing.

He notices for the first time how unnaturally loose-limbed and athletic she is for a baker's daughter.  
**  
**@#£% &**&%£#@  
  
The third time's the charm, as Plagg keeps whispering desperately into the collar of Adrien's white shirt (he's shockingly invested in letting Marinette know he knows she's Ladybug, considering there's no cheese involved).

"Hey, Marinette," he says casually from where he's leaning against the wall next to the textiles room. He's just finished fencing class, and luckily for him Marinette stayed behind to work on one of her projects after school.

Marinette squeaks in surprise, face burning red, and turns to greet him. "Oh, h-hi, Adrien! Didn't - didn't see you there."

"Sorry," he answers, half-smiling, and falls into step with her. "I sneak around without realising sometimes."

"No, uh, no biggie," Mari laughs nervously, and clutches at her bag tightly like she's drawing strength. She doesn't even seem to realise she's doing it.

Adrien's struck with a bolt of inspiration.

"Your Kwami in there?" He asks casually, nodding to the little shoulder bag. He assumes it must be - he only sees her without it in gym class, and that's probably only because she has to take it off or else fear the wrath of the gym teacher.

Marinette starts to nod, mouth opening to say _yeah,_ then freezes.

Adrien lets a little smirk come to his lips.

Her raging blush fades away into a shade of white akin to the paper his piano notes are printed out on. She stops completely in her tracks, eyes wide and glued to his. Her hand closes protectively around her little pink bag.

"I -" She splutters helplessly as she gapes at him. "How -"

Adrien hums, stretching so his back pops. He smiles reassuringly at her, trying to get across that he's not going to do anything bad with the information. "I guess the cat's out of the bag, huh?"

"I - _Chat?"_

"Heya, princess," he acknowledges, inclining his head.

She looks shellshocked. "What - how -"

Adrien lets himself shrug, trying to fight the laugh rising up from his chest. "You look _purr-_ fect in those ribbons, my lady," he hums, finding he can't hold back the laughter when Marinette visibly can't decide if she wants to deck him right then and there or hug him.

"Noooo," she settles on after a second. "I already have to deal with your awful puns on _patrol,_ if you tell them during class I'm gonna _die -"_

Adrien's laughter eases off to a light chuckle, and his grin softens into a fond smile. "Well, now that's all cleared up. . . See you tonight, Mari!"

Adrien bows extravagantly, turns around neatly on one heel, and runs off, snickering when Marinette hollers his name and gives chase.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Thanks for reading! :D


End file.
